Her disappearance somewhere over the South Pacific captivated the world and devastated devoted fans

HER extraordinary exploits and bravery made her a global superstar who was adored by millions.

Glamorous Amelia Earhart – one of the first female aviators – was fearless as she continually flew into the face of danger.

But on July 2, 1937, she vanished while attempting to fly around the globe.

Her disappearance somewhere over the South Pacific during the last 7,000 miles of her epic journey captivated the world and devastated devoted fans.

After the huge search was finally called off and she was pronounced dead, her mysterious end has continued to fascinate – and spark many conspiracy theories.

Now, 75 years on, one of the 20th Century’s most tantalising mysteries may finally be solved thanks to a blurry black and white photo taken by a British military surveyor two months after Amelia disappeared.

Reuters

Enhanced analysis of the image appears to show the landing gear of an aircraft protruding from the waters off Gardner Island, a tiny uninhabited coral atoll, 2,000 miles north west of Australia.

Women’s clothes and other artefacts from the 1930s were found on the atoll, now called Nikumaroro and part of the Micronesian nation of Kiribati.

The discoveries raise the possibility that Amelia reached land where she may have survived for weeks before starving to death.

Until now it had been believed that Amelia’s plane plunged into the sea 300 miles away near Howland Island where she was trying to land to refuel.

The photo evidence has convinced the US to send an official expedition to the South Pacific in July to search for Amelia’s Lockheed Electra plane.

Born in Atchison, Kansas, in 1897, her German/American parents noticed their daughter’s grit and spirit of adventure from an early age.

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At 22, she took her first flight, a 10-minute ride at a fair. She later said: “By the time I had got 300ft off the ground, I knew I had to fly.”

She took her first flying lessons in 1921, bought a plane in 1922 and in October of that year, set a world record for female pilots by flying to an altitude of 14,000ft.

In 1932 she became the first woman – and only the second person after Charles Lindbergh – to fly single-handedly across the Atlantic, landing at Londonderry.

She had flown through the night with a broken altimeter, one engine on fire and fuel dripping down her neck from a leaking line, but when asked why she did it, Amelia replied: “For the fun of it.”

On June 1, 1937, the Queen of the Air and navigator Fred Noonan set off on the challenge to circumnavigate the globe.

Although not the first round-the-world flight, it was to be the longest at 29,000 miles, following a route around the equator.

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By June 29 they had flown 22,000 miles, from Miami over South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia and had 7,000 more miles to cover over the Pacific.

The journey carried huge risks and without modern computer navigation she had to find and land on tiny mid-ocean points like uninhabited Howland Island.

After 20 hours’ flight from Lae in Papua New Guinea, the 39-year-old pilot was being guided down by a US ship off Howland which was waiting to refuel her.

Clouds forced her to fly low, making her destination even harder to spot. Amelia’s last radio communication was: “We must be on you, but cannot see you – gas is running low. Have been unable to reach you by radio. We are flying at 1,000ft.”

Radio operators across the Pacific reported signals that may have been from Amelia – but they were dismissed as hoaxes.

Theories about her disappearance included that she was spying for Roosevelt and died in Japanese detention, or that she faked her death so she could live quietly as a New Jersey housewife.

Recently, American organisation The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery has started gathering evidence which might suggest Amelia lived her last days as a castaway on Gardner Island.

They say a skeleton was found on the atoll in 1940, first believed to be a woman and later regarded as a man.

TIGHAR executive director Richard Gillespie says circumstantial evidence is “so overwhelming” they are convinced they have found the right place.

He added: “We were recovering artefacts that speak of an American woman in the 1930s. There had been other people on the island at the time but nothing to explain this.”

He said that, according to the crew of a British freighter shipwrecked on the island for five days, a person could probably survive for three weeks on pools of rainwater, crabs, coconuts and rats.

The team re-examined the radio signals days after Amelia’s disappearance, and they think at least 57 are credible.

Reuters

One said: “Ship on reef, south east of Howland.” Another contained what seemed to be anguished exchanges between Amelia and Noonan.

The breakthrough, however, came when the 1937 photo of the island by British researcher Eric Bevington was re-examined.

Forensic experts concluded that an object sticking up from the water was a piece of aeroplane landing gear which looked like an Electra. It was enough for the US State Department to order July’s new expedition.

And if tenacious Amelia survived her forced landing and lived as a castaway on that remote Pacific atoll, expedition leader and TIGHAR chief Richard believes that, at least once, it is possible she was yards away from rescue without even knowing it.

When Eric Bevington paid his brief visit to the island shortly after Amelia’s disappearance, he walked around the coast but never went inland.

Richard says: “There’s a lot of noise along that shore, and it would have been very easy to walk along that beach and have no idea that someone was just 200 metres inland.”